Out of the 472,000 lepers diagnosed in China from 1949 to 1997, 430,000 have been cured and there were only about 6,000 lepers in the country by the end of 1997, according to one expert. Chen Xiangsheng, who is associated with a National Center for the Control of Venereal Diseases and Leprosy under the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, said that the prevalence rate of leprosy in China has fallen from 2 per 10,000 people in the 1960s to the present 0.056 per 10,000.